Sing, O Barren

“Sing, O barren, You who have not borne!
Break forth into singing, and cry aloud, you who have not laboured with child!
For more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married woman,” says the LORD.
“Enlarge the place of your tent, and let them stretch out the curtains of your dwellings; do not spare; lengthen your cords, and strengthen your stakes.
For you shall expand to the right and to the left, and your descendants will inherit the nations, and make the desolate cities inhabited.
[Isaiah 54:1-3 NKJV]

There is a song that we have often sung — and I must confess that at first I had no idea what it was about; I loved the tune and the lyrics and did not delve any deeper than surface. The song goes like this...

Sing O Barren, sing
Thou who wouldst not bear.
Now you have a new song for all men everywhere
The river of life within you is calling out to say
Sing O barren, Sing
For this is thy new day.

And a nation shall be born in a day
Yes a nation shall be born in a day
When Zion travails, He shall break forth
And a nation shall be born in a day.

Simply stated, if we look to Jesus, we who can do nothing — because it is not in us to do it — will break out in spiritual fruitfulness with all that The Lord has provided for us. Genesis stresses that all things ‘bear fruit after their kind’, so what fruit am I producing? If I am moving in my own way, I can realise no thing, but if ‘the spirit of The Lord’ is in me then I can do ‘all things’ that His presence empowers. Put another way, I am producing fruit after His kind.

Expand your horizons; it is not about what we feel able to accomplish, because The Lord is offering so much more than we can imagine — and not in the far-distant future, but right here and now. Read the remainder of Isaiah 54 and discover some amazing promises from God for us all, if we will ‘lengthen [our] cords’ and embrace His fruitfulness.

No weapon formed against you shall prosper, and every tongue which rises against you in judgment you shall condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD, and their righteousness is from Me,” says the LORD.
[Isaiah 54:17 NKJV]

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“Sing O Barren” — Marla Jackson

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OSWALD CHAMBERS — RUN TODAY’S RACE
Thursday 6th August 2020
The love of God in Christ Jesus is such that He can take the most unfit man—unfit to survive, unfit to fight, unfit to face moral issues—and make him not only fit to survive and to fight, but fit to face the biggest moral issues and the strongest power of Satan, and come off more than conqueror.

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